How Aretha Franklin Earned, and Deserved, Her Diva Reputation

Long before any other female musician was called—or called herself—a “queen,” Aretha Franklin was, and remains, the Queen of Soul. At just the first note of any one of her songs, you immediately knew it was Aretha, and you were emotionally moved—more so than any other singer in popular music. Ever.

Aretha Franklin exists in a musical world inhabited only by herself. While one could say she was influenced by such gospel singers as Mahalia Jackson or Sister Rosetta Tharpe, she was a singular presence in the world of R&B and pop. Everyone who came after her, from Whitney Houston to Adele to Beyoncé, owes something to Aretha Franklin. Even Otis Redding, who released “Respect” in 1965 and was among the greatest of the male soul singers (along with Smokey Robinson, Curtis Mayfield, and Marvin Gaye), recorded an amazing version of the song, but it couldn’t really touch Aretha’s version. In hers, released in 1967, she expressed the strength, the demands, and the confidence of a woman who wants what she wants, and deserves what she needs, in a way that perhaps only a great blues singer like Big Mama Thornton or Bessie Smith, or the jazz vocalist Billie Holiday, had done before—and no one has done since.

Born in Memphis, her family moved first to Buffalo and then to Detroit, where from the age of five, Aretha grew up singing and later playing the piano in the New Bethel Baptist Church, where her father, C.L. Franklin, was the minister. C.L.’s fiery sermons earned him a celebrity status that drew famous people to his church, including Dr. Martin Luther King, singers Jackie Wilson and Sam Cooke, and the famed gospel singer Clara Ward. Aretha’s early influences never went away, and those gospel roots were evident throughout her 58-year career. But many singers come from church. Aretha had that, but also something else: a genius that couldn’t be taught, trained, or practiced. She had, and was, a vocal gift.

At 18, she signed with Columbia Records, but they really never knew what to do with her. The albums were jazzy, and didn’t give her the opportunity to express that voice that is, and probably always will be, unmatched. When she moved over to Atlantic Records, the label’s partner, producer Jerry Wexler, heard the church in her voice and, by taking her to Muscle Shoals to record, her range and her soul was able to shine through on such songs as “Respect,” “Chain of Fools,” and “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman”—a song actually co-written by Carole King, but one that Aretha made her own.

In addition to her 112 charted Billboard singles, 17 Top 10 hits, 100 R&B hits, 18 Grammys, over 75 million record sales, her 1987 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (the first woman to be inducted), over the years, Aretha Franklin got a reputation as a diva. She rarely did interviews, and she wouldn’t perform in a room or concert hall that had air-conditioning. In 1971, when she performed at Harlem’s famed Apollo Theater, the marquee simply read “She’s home. Aretha Franklin.” And I was told that at one of those shows, she stood onstage, stopped singing mid-song, and said, “I feel air,” and walked off. Musicians who’ve performed with her have regaled me with tales about how they were dripping with sweat during her performances because of the air-conditioning ban to protect her voice. She was notoriously hard to photograph. One art director I know showed up at her home in the suburbs outside of Detroit for a magazine shoot, and Aretha answered the door herself, her hair in rollers, a sandwich in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and said, “This is the picture you want, isn’t it? Well, you’re not getting it.” For many years, she spent her summers in the Hamptons, and it was there that V.F. got a rare photograph of her for our November 2000 music issue.

She had a fear of flying, would only drive to her concerts, and hadn’t performed outside of the U.S. since 1984. She was rumored to be difficult. In recent years, she allegedly acted as her own attorney. In a world where female musicians were regularly financially ripped off in the 1960s and 1970s, she knew her self-worth and was reportedly tough about money. She was definitely gutsy and self-possessed enough to stand in for the ailing Luciano Pavarotti to sing the operatic aria “Nessun Dorma” at the 1998 Grammys. The producer Suzanne de Passe, who worked at Motown and knew Aretha from Detroit, described her as a combination of “street and suite.” When Aretha sang “My Country, ’Tis of Thee” at Barack Obama’s first presidential inauguration in 2009, she did not lip-synch, she wore that hat, and on several occasions, she performed in luxurious fur coats—and was put down by the anti-fur people. But frankly, she could wear or do anything she wanted—she was, after all, Aretha Franklin.

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Lisa RobinsonPrior to joining Vanity Fair in 1999, contributing editor LISA ROBINSON was a longtime music columnist for the New York Post, The New York Times Syndicate, the host of syndicated radio and cable TV shows, and edited several rock magazines.